Legal Wrap is a weekly round-up of key legal and reproductive justice news.

It may seem like the battle over contraception access is a new thing, but it’s not. March 22 marks the 41st anniversary of Eisenstadt v. Baird, a Supreme Court decision that established that individual privacy rights include the right of single persons to possess contraception. As Bridgette Dunlap explained in a recent piece for RH Reality Check, as recently as 1972 a person could be jailed for giving contraception to an unmarried person. As we’re witnessing today with the current assaults on contraception access, there are many individuals in this country fighting to undo the legacy of Baird.

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) submitted amicus briefs in two cases that challenge the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage benefit: Autocam v. Sebelius in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. At the heart of both cases is whether for-profit companies must comply with the benefit, which ensures that employees have access to insurance coverage for birth control without out-of-pocket costs.

The battle to renew the Violence Against Women Act did not include a focus on making emergency contraception (EC) widely available to rape survivors. Sadly, it appears that oversight was the result of women’s rights advocates failing to make EC availability a priority.

Imani Gandi asks the important question of whether the National Mortgage Settlement is failing women and communities color in this must read.

In Kentucky, child-care agencies that contract with the state will now have to ensure that children are not pressured into participating in religious worship or instruction, thanks to a settlement in a case that accused the state agency of looking the other way as private companies discriminated against students on the basis of religion.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, a federal court permanently blocked a state law that was designed to defund Planned Parenthood. The law cut off grants to the health-care provider for HIV-prevention work because some clinics also provide abortion care.

Silicon Valley may seem like a universe away from Steubenville, Ohio, but as Natasha Chart shows, rape culture really is everywhere.

Speaking of Steubenville, I offered some thoughts on how the history of the juvenile justice system worked to produce a guilty verdict in the trial while also doing little to address the victim-blaming and -shaming that encompassed the legal defense in the case.

This week the Supreme Court will hears arguments in two landmark cases that consider the issue of marriage equality and to what extent states or the federal government can discriminate and favor opposite-sex marriage over same-sex marriage. RH Reality Check writers will be covering the arguments and have previewed some of the issues here, but in the meantime, check out this interesting read in The Economist on the similarities between the legal battle for marriage equality and the fight for abortion rights.

Women’s health advocates in the United States often pride themselves on leading the world toward greater gender equality. The celebration over S.47, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA), was no exception. Passage of VAWA required sustained and public fights to ensure it included protections for sexual minorities, immigrants, and Native women and access for individuals in need of post-exposure HIV prophylaxis treatment, which prevents possible HIV infection after unprotected sex.

Yet despite these considerable gains, the advocates failed to ensure that the bill fully protects rape survivors from the psychological and physical threat of unwanted pregnancy.

VAWA makes no explicit mention of emergency contraception (EC), also known as the morning-after pill, which is the only available method to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. The exclusion of EC from VAWA was not the result of opposition from the usual suspects. Rather, by all accounts, the women’s rights advocates who fought to reauthorize VAWA never made EC a priority.

In a conversation over email, a committee aide for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the primary author of the VAWA reauthorization, told me the following: “The law requires states to make sure defendants get tested for HIV within 48 hours or they lose a certain percentage of money from one of the grant programs. Basically, the focus has always been around HIV, and emergency contraception was not an issue raised by any of the groups that the Chairman worked so closely with to reauthorize VAWA.”

I also talked to members of women’s health advocacy groups involved in passing VAWA to find out more about EC’s exclusion. None were willing to speak with me on the record. They all, however, confirmed what Leahy’s staffer said: The failure to include language on pregnancy prevention in the final version of VAWA did not result from fear that the bipartisan law would be rejected. Rather, EC was simply not a top priority for advocates, who instead chose to focus specifically on HIV prevention.

Several sources from these organizations also told me that ensuring access to EC for rape survivors was not significant enough to merit inclusion in federal legislation. They contended that states, not Congress, should adopt laws requiring EC in post-rape care.

The reality, however, is that state legislatures have largely failed to do this, and given the climate of current state EC laws, they cannot be expected to, either.

The majority of states have no requirements regarding the provision of EC to survivors of sexual assault. Only 16 states require hospitals to offer information and counseling about EC, and only 12 of those states (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin) plus the District of Columbia also mandate that hospitals provide EC on-site to victims. (Hawaii’s Senate recently passed a bill requiring hospitals to dispense EC to rape survivors, but it has not yet become law.)

While I believe that most health workers do their best to offer compassionate post-rape care, lack of federal policy on EC provision leaves women in 34 states vulnerable to the whims of individual providers or hospital policies. As brought to light by organizations such as MergerWatch and Catholics For Choice, the increasing number of Catholic hospital mergers has greatly limited access to EC, even for rape survivors. In addition, pharmacists in several states refuse to provide EC on grounds of conscientious objection, a move that has been supported in federal court.

In addition, age restrictions for EC persist. Currently, only women and men age 17 and older are allowed to purchase EC over the counter. Forcing a teenage girl who has already been violated to seek a prescription or ask an older friend to purchase EC for her adds to her trauma. Age restriction policies are also unnecessary.

EC is safe and effective for all ages, and has been approved for adolescent use by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA in 2011, requiring adolescents under the age of 17 to present a prescription for EC. (Some state laws also require doctors to prescribe EC to adolescent rape survivors if necessary, but, again, these laws are few and far between.) Moreover, Sebelius overruled the FDA’s approval of EC as an on-the-shelf product, rather than a behind-the-counter drug.

Women and teens who need EC must therefore wait until pharmacies are open to buy the drug and also hope that the pharmacist will not object to selling EC. Because EC is only effective within five days of unprotected sex, unnecessary delays jeopardize a woman’s chance to prevent pregnancy, which is especially egregious if the woman was raped. Lack of EC services within VAWA therefore obstructs adolescents’ and women’s already limited access to EC at a time when they are most likely to need it.

Given all of these obstacles to EC access, especially for sexual assault survivors, it is notable that reproductive health advocates overlooked the possibility to incorporate language on EC into the reauthorization of VAWA. Indeed, very few advocates have critically analyzed VAWA, perhaps because many do not recognize the law’s exclusion of EC access and other pregnancy-related services.

For example, after the passage of VAWA, Chloë Cooney of Planned Parenthood Global published a commentary on RH Reality Checkurging international leaders to model resolutions after VAWA. She was specifically speaking to U.S. delegates at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)—which last week concluded a conference on violence against women—encouraging them to “leverage this victory and momentum for women’s rights and turn our attention to women and girls beyond our borders” by including “a commitment to expand access to sexual and reproductive health services” in CSW’s annual resolution.

Less than one week after President Obama signed VAWA, delegates at CSW agreed to global commitments for eliminating and preventing violence against women. Despite opposition from conservative representatives, including those from Iran, Russia, and the Vatican, the majority of CSW’s 45 member states were able to push forward language that explicitly included post-exposure HIV prophylaxis and ECas well as safe abortion services (where legal), which were also excluded from VAWA.

Comparing CSW’s progress on reproductive health guidelines to that of VAWA is in many ways disheartening. Despite VAWA’s passage, we have at best a scattershot approach to providing survivors of sexual assault with the means of preventing pregnancy resulting from rape. The failure on our part to do so causes further violence to them and clouds any mission to help women “beyond our borders.”

One in three women worldwide will be physically, sexually, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. In some countries the number is as high as 70 percent.

This week and last, representatives of nations around the world have gathered to address the global epidemic of gender-based violence at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), an annual meeting to assess progress on advancing women’s rights. Having passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in Congress, despite attempts to block it by extreme conservatives, the United States has demonstrated its commitment to ending gender-based violence at home and can now support the world’s efforts to do the same.

This year alone, headlines from cities all over the globe, from New Delhi to Steubenville, have served as a grim reminder that despite laws, violence against women stubbornly persists. However, in some cases these stories have started positive debates and helped lead to the passage of better laws.

During the 2012 elections in the United States, we listened in horror as conservative candidates made one atrocious statement after another, revealing a complete lack of awareness that U.S. women suffer nearly five million partner-related physical assaults or rapes each year. Some small satisfaction can be found in the fact that these statements cost those candidates their seats. But the harsh reality remains: Too many mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends remain at risk of physical threat.

That’s why the hard-won battle to pass VAWA here in the United States was such a big victory. Signed into law last week, this legislation authorizes programs and policies that protect key populations, including same-sex partners, immigrant women, and Native-American women (allowing them to seek justice when their abusers are not Native-American). To exclude these people would further stigmatize already vulnerable populations when they most need care. Instead, the law will ensure these individuals can get the counseling, shelter, and other services they need to escape violent and abusive situations.

VAWA was first passed in 1994 and has been reauthorized twice since, always with bipartisan support. This latest VAWA reauthorization should not have been controversial. The bill has expanded critical protections with each iteration, reflecting a growing national recognition of the particular needs of marginalized populations.

Now it’s time to leverage this victory and momentum for women’s rights and turn our attention to women and girls beyond our borders.

At this year’s CSW, United States Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said, “Violence against women weakens our communities, stunts our economies, and erodes our common values.”

Advocates for women’s rights must urge the global community to put forth an outcome document that expands protections against violence for women everywhere and protects their reproductive rights, without any caveats or conditions.

As health-care providers, Planned Parenthood health centers see firsthand the damage violence inflicts on women’s bodies and lives—and witness the pervasive fact that marginalized women remain at greatest risk of violence with the fewest resources to combat it.

We know that addressing and preventing violence against women requires working with women’s health providers. Studies have shown that women’s health providers are a critical intervention for women in abusive relationships. In fact, women in family planning centers who received both assessment and counseling on harm reduction strategies were 60 percent more likely to end a relationship because it felt unhealthy or unsafe.

This week, as negotiations come to a close, the U.S. delegation must continue to express strong support for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights and urge other nations to do the same. Opponents of women’s health attend these meetings in full force to try to keep reproductive rights out of the discussion. But we can’t have a real conversation about ending sexual violence without making sure protections apply to all women and young people and talking about victims’ access to comprehensive health care

A strong resolution must include a commitment to expand access to sexual and reproductive health services, it must recognize rights, it must include marginalized women, and it must support future generations by pushing for comprehensive sex education that addresses harmful gender norms.

As President Obama said upon signing VAWA last week, “All women deserve the right to live free from fear.” This is true for all women, no matter who they are or where they live.

After months of back-and-forth, both arms of Congress have finally reauthorized a version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that doesn’t purposefully exclude people on the basis of their ethnicity, immigration status, or sexual orientation. The inclusive version, which passed the Senate 78 to 22 earlier last month, passed the House in a 286-to-138 vote on Thursday. Like the Senate passage, all 138 votes against the bill came from Republicans.

A victory belated is still a victory, and women’s rights advocates are celebrating while they can. “Today Congress stepped up and sent a clear message: protecting women and families from domestic violence is not a political issue,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, in an email release. “The incredible efforts of our Senate Democratic women, along with the leadership of Representatives Slaughter and Moore in the House, broke the Republican stalemate to make sure women will have the protection from violence they deserve. No longer will women be discriminated against based on where they may live or who they may love.”

As Erin Matson noted earlier, the reauthorization of VAWA came on the last day of Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month. Thanks to the newly reauthorized, all-inclusive VAWA, many programs addressing intimate partner violence will continue to exist.

As Congress works to pass a new immigration law, legislators must realize that neither a border nor the threat of detention will keep a determined parent from trying to reach a child who needs her care.

Congress needs to understand something important as it works to pass a new immigration law: Neither a border nor even the threat of detention can keep a determined parent from trying to reach a child who needs her care.

To ignore this fact, when we have the opportunity to create an immigration system that truly meets the needs of our families and communities, would not only be a lost opportunity for good public policymaking, but also would put countless lives at risk.

I have spent the majority of my career working with immigrant victims of domestic abuse. Although it can be challenging, it has proven to be extremely rewarding and fulfilling work. For more than a decade, I have had the privilege to work with men, women, and children who have taught me how to persevere.

Harsh Laws Undermine Critical Victim Protections

Fortunately, in most of the cases I see, something can be done. I often can assist my clients with filing self-petitions under the Violence Against Women Act based on domestic abuse, or applying for U Visas based on being crime victims, or at the very least can refer them to counseling services and assistance to obtain orders of protection. I have learned to appreciate the many small steps it takes a person to move from a life of abuse, victimization, and dependence to a life of freedom and security. It is not easy, and dealing with the complex bureaucratic immigration system is a burden that often takes a backseat to the more urgent issues of personal safety, survival, and escaping abuse.

Despite progress in our laws to protect victims of domestic violence, the U.S. government’s focus on harsh enforcement practices and rollback of basic due process protections—including the chance to see a judge before being deported—have led to victims being denied true security. Deportation can be life-threatening for people who are forced to return to countries where they will not be protected from domestic violence, or for the children they leave behind in precarious situations in the United States. Deportation can mean death.

When Carmela’s* case came to me, she had recently been released from immigration detention. As a child, she was abused by her parents and older siblings. The abusive home life led her to get married at a very young age, but her husband also became abusive. Carmela fled her husband’s abuse and came to the United States. She eventually married again in the United States, only to be victimized again.

In 1995, an immigration judge granted Carmela voluntary departure. She left the United States to comply with the judge’s order. Unfortunately, the attorney she had at the time did not submit the appropriate paperwork so that the U.S. government would know that she complied with the departure order. Thus, her voluntary departure, which would have allowed her potentially to return to the U.S. lawfully at any time, turned into a deportation order, which permanently barred her from lawfully returning to the United States.

Carmela’s Struggle to Be Near Her Children

Carmela’s abusive husband insisted that she return to the United States and arranged for her to return unlawfully. Carmela felt desperate, as if she had no other choice, because she needed to care for her children. She returned to the United States, only to again be caught by immigration officials, detained, and subject to reinstatement of her deportation order. Even after she was deported, the abusive cycle continued and Carmela’s husband once again arranged for her to return to the United States unlawfully.

Carmela eventually was able to leave her abusive relationship, but without legal immigration status, it has been difficult to provide financially for her family. Her 17-year-old daughter Magaly is an excellent student who has lived in the United States since she was one. Magaly is applying for temporary protection from deportation under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Carmela also has helped to raise an “adopted” U.S. citizen daughter. Another daughter, Ariana, has become a naturalized U.S. citizen and begun a family of her own.

After a car accident in 2012, a police officer arrested Carmela and transferred her to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. She was detained for three months, during which Magaly was left without her mother. Current immigration law denies Carmela a hearing in front of an immigration judge because of her prior deportation order. NIJC has helped Carmela file two applications for a stay of removal and a request for prosecutorial discretion, since she easily falls into what the Obama administration has designated as “low priority” for deportation.

However, with her prior removal order, Carmela does not qualify for any long-term immigration relief. If Carmela were able to qualify for permanent legal status, she would be able to solidify the roots she has established in her community, with her family. Carmela and Magaly would not be afraid that ICE could show up at their doorstep any day and take Carmela into custody again. Magaly would have the opportunity to become a permanent resident and be able to pursue dreams of a college education after she graduates from high school this year. Instead, the family lives in fear that Carmela can be deported any day.

Laws Should Protect, Not Punish, Families

Congress needs to rebuild our immigration system so that it includes people like Carmela and Magaly. Carmela should not be punished for returning to the United States to care for her children. She should be afforded a hearing in front of an immigration judge and an opportunity to share her story. She should not have to fear returning to immigration detention. She is not a criminal or a flight risk. Rather, she is a mother and a provider. She should be allowed to stay in the United States and obtain long-term immigration status to build a life with her family, free from abuse and fear.

And if my argument is not persuasive enough, read Magaly’s own words from her DACA work authorization application, where she tells the U.S. government why she wants a chance for her family to build a future in the United States:

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which reauthorizes funding for the fight against domestic violence in the United States. The bill passed after a prolonged partisan fight over specific protections for Native-American women and lesbian, bisexual, and trans women. Also this week, the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the need for the promotion of equal voting rights, and, in particular, the continued need for oversight of equal rights in states that historically have discriminated against African Americans.

Each story elicited a pundit storm of outrage over the partisan divide on discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or sexual orientation. Many politicians and justices quoted in the press perpetuated the notion that liberals care about discrimination while conservatives do not.

But that would be an oversimplification.

At the heart of the discussion about the need for both VAWA and the Voting Rights Act is a fundamental disagreement about what governments should do about discrimination, and, even more so, what they shouldn’t do.

That difference of opinion is what led Justice Antonin Scalia to refer to the Voting Rights Act—a law that was conceived of as a tool to overcome racial entitlement among whites—as perpetuating a sense of racial entitlement among non-whites. By portraying people of color as receiving, or rather demanding, special treatment, Scalia converted the legal protection of equal rights into a situation of enforced discrimination.

It is also why some Republicans cited “inclusiveness” as the reason they supported explicit benefits for generally underserved populations in VAWA, while other Republicans claimed to vote against these benefits for the very same reason. While the former acknowledge that some women need to be explicitly named in order to be visible to policymakers and service providers, the latter promote the notion that by treating everyone the same, we will somehow magically be equal.

Simply put, the difference is not so much whether someone cares about discrimination but rather if they choose to see the full range of its reach. With some notable exceptions, most people across the political spectrum recognize flagrant forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The real divide is on how much we believe can and should be done to overcome historical disadvantage and internalized prejudice. Should the government allow quotas in universities to promote race and gender equality? Should states actively promote a diverse workforce?

International human rights standards are clear that affirmative action can only be legitimate while it serves a purpose; when a situation of historical disadvantage has been overcome—that is, when those who were meant to benefit from affirmative action genuinely are equal—the special measures must go.

The question, of course, is how to determine the exact moment when everyone truly has equal opportunities. This is a question that necessarily will have different answers for different people. Recent studies suggest that discrimination is still a reality for many of the subgroups that benefit the most from both the new incarnation of VAWA and the Voting Rights Act: Blacks, Latinos, working women, and Native Americans. Still, the American public just reelected a Black president, and the minority leader of the House of Representatives is a woman. In other words, systemic inequalities persist even though some people manage to escape their consequences. In this situation, perhaps the best test of whether temporary special measures are still warranted is conversational. When we stop talking about how strange it is that President Obama and Representative Pelosi got to where they are, there will be equal opportunity for all.

Of course, the courts cannot use conversation as a legal test to determine when to mandate an end to temporary special measures. Conversation can, however, be a rule of thumb for the rest of us until such time where it is no longer remarkable to find African Americans or women in positions of power.

In the meantime, the onus should be on the government, including members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court, to prove when affirmative action has run its course, both when it comes to the prevention of domestic violence and voting rights.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) today, the final day of Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month. So what's at stake for youth?

UPDATE: The House has just passed the Senate version of VAWA. The bill will now be sent to President Obama for signature.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) today, the final day of Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month. The previous Congress had allowed VAWA to expire for the first time since it passed in 1994.

Widely discussed points of contention include a Republican-led effort to drop protections for immigrant women, LGBT people and Native American. Less covered have been battles over inclusion of programs serving young people. So what’s at stake for youth?

First, it’s critical to note that many youth are also immigrants, LGBT and/or Native American – so in any case, the no-one-under-the-bus Senate version of the bill is urged by advocates.

The Senate version of VAWA (S. 47) also includes more robust protections for young people, including initiatives to address sex trafficking of girls and the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, which provides for programming, education and disclosure requirements targeting sexual violence, dating violence and stalking on college campuses. These elements are missing from the House bill, and are seen as especially critical within the broader violence prevention community because the highest rates of intimate partner violence are known to occur in young people ages 16 through 24.

Both House and Senate versions of VAWA include a consolidated prevention and early intervention program to address teen dating violence. According to advocacy group Futures Without Violence, one of three teen women is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse.

Kiersten Stewart, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for Futures Without Violence, urged members of the House of Representatives to pass the Senate’s version of the Violence Against Women Act in a bipartisan briefing on Capitol Hill as a clock ticked above her head this morning. “When we pass good laws we do indeed get good programs,” she said.

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly this week to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), approving the measure by a 78 to 22 member vote. The bill was bipartisan, sort of, in that it garnered the vote of every female senator regardless of party lines. However, 22 Republican male senators voted against the bill because of its provisions dealing with domestic abuse on tribal lands and discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Progressive groups called the passage a victory for women. “I applaud the Senate for passing the Violence Against Women Act,” said Stephanie Schriock, President of EMILY’s List, said via press release.

When the EMILY’s List community helped elect nine pro-choice Democratic women to the Senate last November, this was the kind of progress they had in mind. I am encouraged that this long overdue piece of legislation is one step closer to becoming law, and I hope that the House of Representatives quickly follows suit. The only things standing in the way are House Republicans and their scorched-earth anti-woman tactics, which prevented VAWA from passing last year. But women across the country have made it clear that they are watching how their Representative votes on this issue, and they won’t stand by and let Republican extremists block access to vital services for victims of violence.

NOW President Terry O’Neill also demanded the House to end their divisive, destructive quest against the bill and vote in support of the Senate version. “We call on the House to take up and pass Rep. Gwen Moore’s (D-Wis.) bill (H.R. 11), which mirrors the bipartisan Senate bill and already has nearly 200 sponsors. There are many moderate House Republicans who should be sponsors of H.R. 11, including the 17 Republicans who recently wrote to House Republican leaders calling on them to pass an inclusive VAWA as soon as possible,” O’Neill said via release. “The time for delay is over. Let’s recognize that all women matter, and pass the inclusive version of VAWA now.”

But it’s not just interest groups urging House action, but Republican lawmakers, too. According to New York Magazine, 17 House Republicans sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor asking them to bring the Senate version to the House and demand they hold enough of the caucus together to reauthorize it.

Will Cantor and Boehner be able to stand up to their own party and lead them to a bipartisan vote? History tells us just how unlikely that may be.

This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.

Forty years ago in the United States, Roe v. Wade institutionally recognized a woman’s right to make choices about her vessel. The voyage of a woman’s body is her own, and she is her own captain, able to follow whatever compass she pleases. However, there are efforts by some in the United States government to commit multiple acts of piracy against the vessels of the souls of women, especially women of color. In this attempt to seize navigational control of these vessels, a government based on the premise of the purity of the desires and morals of rich white straight men, to echo the sentiments of Audre Lorde, is doing what it was designed to do, and fulfilling the purpose of this particular tool of the master.

In the United States, power is largely about choices, and the tool of the Grand Old Party (GOP/Republican Party) has made it clear, via their rhetoric and policies, that it does not believe women are able to make choices about their own vessels. For women of color this assumption of an inherent inability to choose for oneself is compounded by the systemic belief about racial inferiority in the United States. One needs look no further than the phasing out of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the U.S. recently. The major reasons for the expiration of VAWA, which had been active since 1994, were that it extended protections to undocumented women, and empowered tribal courts on Native American land—or rather, reservation spaces; the entire country is Native American land.

VAWA would have provided crucial support for Native American women against sexual abuse and domestic violence. In her op-ed on Take Part, “Tribal Councilwoman for The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians,” Terri Henry does a great job of showing how the rebuttal of VAWA by Congress devalues the lived experiences of native women, and does is poignantly from an American Indian perspective. By allowing VAWA to expire, Congress has hamstrung the ability of these women to make choices about their vessels, to seek justice when that vessel—their temple—is violated. This disregard for the souls of Native American women and the sanctity of their vessels speaks to the larger belief within the United States government that women of color, and their respective communities, are not the best equipped to make choices about their own bodies, their own vessels, their own temples.

We all make choices. We choose to believe in a particular definition of life. We choose to believe in a particular definition of death. The purpose of this post is not to make a case against anything. The purpose of this post is to make a case for something. And that something is choice. The choice of a woman, especially a woman of color, is to follow the compass of her choosing and to venture through this human realm on her own accord. If we make major choices about other peoples vessels we are no better than pirates stealing ships. Abortion or no abortion is a choice, but that is not the choice of the United States government, that is not the choice of men. It is the choice of that soul housed in that vessel that is the body. Depending on the compass one chooses to navigate the seas of humanity, the choices one makes with regards to one’s vessel will be addressed at a particular moment in time. And as far as I’m concerned that choice is between a captain and the creator of her compass, whoever she believes that to be.

Throughout the 2012 legislative session Congress—most often the Republican-dominated House members—have put women through the wringer when it came to federal bills. Routine anti-poverty measures that routinely assist women have been gutted, so called “entitlements” that disproportionately affect women have been threatened, and federal abortion rights restrictions have been repeatedly proposed in order to offer mostly theatrical endeavors that provide red meat to the anti-choice activists filling the lawmakers’ coffers.

Now, as the curtain closes on the lame duck session, House Republicans have dropped all pretense that this was about anything other than an agenda to punish women simply for being women. After eight years, the Violence Against Women Act is no longer in effect, because Republicans are concerned that it could help too many of the “wrong” kind of women.

Back in April, the Senate approved VAWA reauthorization fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont’s Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho’s Mike Crapo), and seemed on track to be reauthorized without much of a fuss, just as it was in 2000 and 2005.

But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans — and they’d rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn’t go anywhere.

As Washington Senator Patty Murphy expressed in a press release, the bill would have been expanded to cover an additional 30 million women. But assisting more women in need is apparently a flaw, not an asset, with the House GOP. Among other changes, allowing undocumented women the ability to report abuse without worrying about deportation and expanding assistance to LGBT, or Native Americans seems to be a deal breaker with the Republicans.

The Republican party has a strange disconnect when it comes to “protecting” women. On the one hand they create an abundance of unnecessary anti-choice legislation allegedly designed to “protect” women from boogeymen doctors and from themselves. But when presented with real cases of women who have been victimized and need help and resources, they simply turn away.